Friday, December 16, 2011

This is the way it's supposed to be?

By the time my cancer treatment was completed, I had been transformed from a youngish-looking middle-aged woman into an elderly-looking crone. I’ve whined about it often enough: the hair that grew back after chemo was thin and gray instead of the thick mass I’d had before; my skin was left sallow and speckled with age spots; my figure, once reasonably good, became peculiarly bottom-heavy with the removal of my breasts; and my once remarkable strength and flexibility became a little less remarkable.

But the thing is, cancer struck me at menopause. And a lot of shit happens to ALL women around that time. O.K., most women hang on to their breasts. But hair thins, skin loses its luster, bodies sag, joints age.

I attend a weekly yoga class with a lot of women my age and older. And lately I’ve been noticing that doughty as they are, they look a lot like me. Maybe this is what I’m supposed to look like?